


Of Minds and Midgardians

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Category: James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Body Swap, Happens in conjunction with the film, Imprisonment, Loki and Q share bodies, M/M, Magic, Mass confusion as a result, Mind Control, Mind Meld, Nonverbal Communication, Shapeshifting, Thor: The Dark World, Worship, and can switch between both, and minds, while shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 20:45:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1361158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q has been a Loki worshipper all his life - until New York. In seeking to find his god and release him from Asgardian imprisonment, Q winds up on Asgard. </p>
<p>Before long, Q has a Norse god in his head and seiðr at his fingertips, while the safety of the realms is threatened by something far more terrifying than they could know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Minds and Midgardians

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt began it. Now, the entire series has been collated into a single fic.
> 
> Q is magic, Loki is insane, things are very confusing for quite a lot of the time for everybody concerned. Set in tandem with the event of Thor 2, so there ARE spoilers for that if you haven't seen it yet.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, especially the people who have been asking for continuations for the last couple of months while I tried to make this cohere. Jen.

Q had only small, certain rituals; it was hardly something overly novel, and not intrusive, and while yes, a lot of people found it very odd or even somehow distasteful given the rarity of such an odd sub-category of worship.

Honestly, Q didn’t care overly what people thought about it. It was his quirk, and while it did shatter some common misconceptions, it was hardly illegal or even morally questionable.

Chaos, in Q’s eyes, was a world constant. Unavoidable, but if managed – if respected – not necessarily a negative influence. Storms are only frightening if you are exposed, left to the mercy of the elements.

Thus, Q remained faithful to Loki, God of Chaos.

And then, of course, all hell broke loose in North America. New York, of course – it was always New York – and then, being a Loki worshipper became tantamount to being some side-member of Al Qaida. R came into his office, for god’s sake, and told him she thought it was probably improper to remain a worshipper of the god who had destroyed a decent proportion of Manhattan.

Q had some issues with this, given that the exact circumstances were still very unclear, but it was a known fact that there had been off-world technology involved, Loki had been MIA for a long while – and potentially having his moves dictated by an external force – and overall, the situation was very fishy, and having Loki as a scapegoat was convenient, but not necessarily fair or accurate.

The main point of concern was that Loki had, apparently, been taken back to Asgard as a form of prisoner, which boded very badly for the levels of chaos and control in the world at large.

Breaking into SHIELD was lamentably easy; they needed better tech, really. They hadn’t even Stark-proofed it, let alone Q-proofed. He easily delved through the levels of security, finding the core concepts of how transportation in and out of Asgard worked, and whether or not it was feasible.

Based on the workings of one Jane Foster, it was definitely feasible.

Q grinned, and picked up the phone.

-

Erik Selvig came to London – with Jane and Darcy in tow – because he was being insistently pestered by a young man who claimed to be involved with Norse mythology, knew that the gods existed, was adept enough at certain aspects of science to be very aware that he wasn’t adept enough to open different anomalies between worlds, and yet was rather insistent that he needed to.

It took a very, very long time to realise that he wasn’t asking in the hope of saving the world, finding Thor, or anything that useful.

No: the ridiculous boy wanted to free Loki.

The concept caused ringing silence.

All of them immediately abandoned ‘Q’ to his own devices, and for the next two years, Q tried exceptionally hard to find other ways to get into Asgard.

And then - out of nowhere - Erik got distracted at Stonehenge and vanished, and Jane then disappeared and Q was absolutely livid because he’d been trying to make it all happen from the outset and now absolute chaos was erupting which made perfect sense given that Loki had been locked up for two years.

Q discovered that there were anomalies in a warehouse just outside Greenwich.

Things got very weird after that.

Bond came with him, of course. The two had been together for nearly two years themselves; Bond had grown used to Q’s oddnesses, and was quite happy to have a look in a warehouse and see what could be found.

They were just exploring when Bond had also then – inexplicably – vanished. 

The agent had then _reappeared_ looking surprisingly pale, taken Q’s hand, and guided him to a wall. 

Bond disappeared. 

Bond reappeared on the other side of the warehouse.

Q glanced from the wall to Bond, and back again, in transparent and utterly unapologetic disbelief. “How…”

“Have a look,” Bond suggested, weakly gesturing, walking back over to Q’s wall

Q did as told, and walked into a wall.

“Oh my _god._ ”

The issue was in that Q didn’t seem to be going again. Bond had vanished, and popped up almost instantly. Q had gone through, and appeared to be popping nowhere at all. He reached back to where he’d come out of, sticking an arm through; it vanished, to his personal horror.

Somebody touched his arm, and Q shrieked, withdrawing said arm extremely quickly and nearly overbalancing. “Fuck,” he mumbled, looked back through, blinking, and tried to follow his arm back out into the real world.

Bond stared at him. “I just found a new world,” Q mumbled. “What the fuck is going on?”

Things did not get any more normal from that stage onwards.

There was a lot of bright light. A man in a red cape. Q was kidnapped, and Bond essentially pounced to hitch a ride. A few minutes of Q’s personal hell – flying without any form of safety or suspension to and from an unknown destination in the hands of somebody Q was only just beginning to grasp was probably Thor with James Bond hanging on for dear life – and they wound up in a large, bronze and gold-coloured room.

“This one accompanied. This one is that which we seek.”

Q very narrowly avoided throwing up on his shoes, staring at Heimdall with absolute and ridiculous disbelief, gaping, while the God of Thunder stared at him with a thunderous expression (Q giggled pathetically) and guided him away into Asgard.

Asgard.

Holy shit.

Within another hour, Q had decided he had gone insane, because honestly, he had no better means of dealing with anything that was going on.

Apparently, he had been brought to Asgard because he had managed to navigate between worlds and instinctively trace wormholes between dimensions in a way conventionally only found on one particular being. A being who was presently locked up in the bowels of Asgard, and one who – interestingly – Q had a longstanding interest in; it appeared that Q, somehow, fostered some instincts in terms of inter-dimensional travel.

Nobody took the news worse than Q, except maybe Bond. But then, Bond was being held at knifepoint for the most part, so the point was a little bit moot.

Asgard was in chaos. Nobody knew what to do; Frigga, wife of Odin and mother to Thor and Loki, had been murdered. Another human being – Jane Foster, it seemed, and she took one look at Q and her mouth fell open – had managed to infect themselves with a type of alien energy that could destroy the world, as far as Q could understand.

Odin wanted to have Q interrogated, to understand how and why he had such a connection with Loki – and, indeed, seemed to share some of his latent powers. Thor dissuaded – something Q was terrifyingly grateful for, given Norse mythology and Odin in general – and thus, Q was dragged away to meet with Loki, God of Chaos. Bond was dragged in another direction, putting up one hell of a fight, Odin ordering him to be kept with Jane Foster as prisoners until further notice.

“A Midgardian to see you.”

Loki was a wreck. Body slumped against the far wall, blood from his torn feet smeared across the white, the ravages of grief and pain etched in every hollow of skin. He didn’t look up; Q could hear his voice, a strangely distant thing, an angry and proud declamation of his own brilliance which seemed odd, didn’t seem his own.

Q watched him, expression open and calm, unable to believe he was watching the wreckage of his deity. Loki looked straight back at him, eyes narrowing faintly.

“No more illusions, brother.”

Abruptly, the strange cloak that had been throttling Loki’s voice was gone. The blurred edges faded. Loki was crystal clear, and Thor abruptly looked shocked, and Loki had not stopped staring. “You see me,” he announced to Q, without any chance for contradiction. “Midgardian. You see me.”

“Yes?” Q returned, curious. “What’s not to see?”

Loki’s eyes sparked slightly; a twitch of his hands, and Q expected something, anything. “Brother?!” Thor bellowed next to him. “Enough of this. Enough of all this.”

Another vague flick. “Your name, Midgardian?”

“Q,” Q told him, in a state of utter disbelief; next to him, Thor was railing at the cell’s edge, trying to speak to Loki – it seemed he had blacked out the partition between them – while Loki himself watched Q, eyes dark. “I’m Q.”

Loki stood slowly, ignoring all but Q himself. Feet crunched over the remnants of glass, hair falling over his face, entire body a throttled study in pain. “Q,” Loki repeated, rolling the letter around on his tongue, tasting it carefully. “Q. You are impervious. How?”

“I don’t know,” Q replied, extremely honestly. “I really don’t. I’ve worshipped you as a god for most of my life – I can only assume that has a connection.”

Loki smiled, very slowly, apparently entirely content with the concept of being worshipped. “A potentially useful trait,” he murmured. “Are you able to channel it?”

For a moment, Q paused. He could hear the clouded voice again, working somehow independently, taunting Thor while Q and Loki held their own dialogue. “I don’t know,” he admitted softly.

“Q. What does he say?”

A moment of silence; Loki looked at him, smiling slowly, challengingly. “You can find the anomalies?” he queried. “You are seiðr. Magic. Close your eyes, Midgardian. Trust me. Reach out for me.”

It was probably the single most idiotic thing Q was ever likely to do in his short and fleeting existence – but he was in Asgard, talking to a god while another god ranted next to him, and he was apparently capable of magic, which lent him a perhaps false sense of invincibility.

“This is your calling,” Loki supplemented, soft, voice a lulling fact, the voice that Q could half-hear in the moments he dedicated himself to his rituals, when he tried to forge some link between himself and a deity he could understand. The leading drive in his innovations, his ideas. The murmur at the edge of his consciousness that tempted him, promised him, and – quite honestly – had yet to fail him. “Extend outwards. Find me.”

Q had no idea what he was doing.

He found Loki.

Q’s eyes flew open, fixing on the tangible form of the god, while his mind slid into – wound in, around – the god’s mind.

“Loki, leave him.”

Thor’s voice was distant, inconsequential; Q was entranced just by this moment, falling headlong into the promise of emerald green, the broken form of a god he needed latching onto the fragile edge of a human mind – one capable of far more than any other Midgardian – and finding an anchor.

“We are one.”

_“Loki.”_

Q staggered, head reeling, throbbing, and for a moment there was absolute chaos and he collapsed, knees unable to hold him up, and Thor was bellowing but it was distant, divorced from him, an unreachable quirk that didn’t matter now that his mind was expanding outwards, images flickering into and through him, and he retched as he felt the unbelievable agony of grief slam into him, and he was one, and Loki’s expression crunched briefly as Q’s memories hit into him, too, and Q could see shreds of sparks, of air, the convulsions of breath and knew what they meant, knew how to touch them.

“What have you done?” Thor asked, slightly hoarse, his voice coming back into focus; Q blinked, uncertain of what in the hell was going on.

_Say nothing. We need one another._

“I don’t know,” Q told Thor, entirely honestly, still watching Loki and seeing the smile, a smile he was beginning to mirror and not mirror, a smile that lived on the edges of his lips but his features didn’t know how to pull yet. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”

Thor looked immensely distrustful, shooting Loki looks of torn hate, torn distrust, torn grief and all shattered edges. “We must go,” he rumbled. “Our father should know of this. He, perhaps, will understand.”

_Your father. Not mine._

Q heard it, knew it.

Thor turned his back, and Q’s green eyes were – for a moment – sparks.

-

The simple scope was extraordinary.

Q felt like he could touch stars. In a manner of speaking, he could; the world was heartbeats out of reach, and Loki crowed with him, through him, and Q laughed with untempered joy at the sheer wonder of everything.

Asgard was beautiful. Q was shown away from Loki’s form, and allowed reign over the elements. Two bodies of magic, two natural beings who understood elements of a world in different senses, and the conscious remembrances of a god who knew how to command those elements.

Loki needed to be king. Q knew that. Loki knew that. The power was better placed with Loki than Thor, the latter being too irresponsible, too burdened with a hero complex that would never quite die.

Thor and his friends discussed plans, discussed facts. Jane Foster was infected and damaged by substances that stood to destroy worlds. Asgard was falling. A Midgardian was seiðr.

The above factors led to a simple truth: Loki was needed. Q was unsafe, and needed to be investigated given that nobody had seen the like before. 

Of course, Q agreed to be escorted away. He met with Bond again – the agent looking over his Quartermaster with something like confusion, something untraceable that Q’s memories did not quite capture – and waited, quite patiently.

Q could close his eyes, and see through Loki’s form.

The worlds blended and merged and changed, and the link remained intact through worlds. Q had been worshipping for so long, so steadily; his mind clung on, and Loki’s clung back, Q his protection.

In a quiet instant, Loki’s mind slid wholly into Q’s.

With a soft crow of pure, disbelieving joy, the frail body mutated into an imitation of Odin himself.

Bond watched with naked horror. “Q?” he asked, tense and angry and confused and deeply unhappy with the entire situation. _“Q.”_

“It’s me,” Q told him, through another’s mouthpiece. “I… being here, it’s letting me access more than I knew I could, and this… I’m just experimenting.”

So simple.

Loki would kill Odin, through another’s form, through another’s mind. Q would keep Odin’s form alive, in tandem with Loki, the battle raging on another world where Loki would feign a death.

The latter would return home to Asgard, and take control of a kingdom that had always been his. There was no point in killing the young Midgardian; no. He would simply remain as a form, an empty shell in which to pour the memories and hurts of both their psyches. Both would be free, and both would work with one another; Loki would dominate, naturally, but the Midgardian would become a god.

In a manner of speaking.

The worship of so many years would finally mean something.

Of course, neither Q nor Loki had counted on the idea of James Bond knocking Q’s form out with a single, well-placed blow.

-

Q woke up.

Loki woke up.

There was so much _too much_ everything was in so many _colours_ , and Q laughed unchecked and lifted his fingers up to brush dust particles that swam in the air in front of him, and discovered shortly afterwards that he could not move.

“Q?”

Loki twisted, green eyes bright and alive. “Hello James,” he answered calmly, Asgardian spellwork holding him in place; they had found him, located him, and he retreated out into the empty space of the void between worlds, creeping into the shell of his usual form while Odin and his collection of morons pretended to understand the deft intricacies of seiðr as it worked between twin Midgardian and Aesir psyches.

With each passing moment, both Q and Loki knew more, understood more. Loki was better versed, but Q had been granted access to the depths of knowledge a mind like Loki’s could hold; Q was no passive spectator, he never could be, and thus sifted through the caverns of seiðr practises and knowledge, filtering into what he would need.

Loki was a god of mischief, not balance – Q was not ignorant enough to assume he would be permitted himself, when this was done. He and his god were utterly merged, now, the edges indistinguishable; when Loki’s machinations were done, he could be discarded simply enough, but _would not be_.

It was simply a case of remaining necessary. If Loki required him to survive, Q could ensure his life, body, mind remained his own and remained intact.

Q was learning how to foster seiðr, in his own self. Stretch out, grasp the seeds of Yggdrasil and use it for his own purposes; Loki occupied himself elsewhere, while Q learnt all his could. 

Knowledge is a tricky thing; once won, never truly lost, and once cemented in memory a formidable thing. Q simply needed to borrow Loki’s memory, his comprehension – which they already shared – and he had all he required.

“Q, Loki’s in your mind, we think. Nobody’s sure how…”

“He let me in,” Loki replied through Q’s mouth, the green too edged to be Q’s. “The human child opened his mind and let me walk in, twin minds; I have never known it in practise, but it would seem that he and I are parallel.”

Bond shook his head slightly, and Thor replaced him; the thunder god was _terrifying_ , and Q’s body responded on instinct while Loki rolled his eyes, and the duality was impossible. “The Midgardian is his own personage – release him. Loki, I require your help, and no other…”

“And what could my _dear_ adopted sibling possibly wish from me?” Loki asked lightly, dancing off consonants and watching Thor with abrupt interest, letting Q’s body shimmer into Loki’s. “The boy is mine, Thor. Give me him, and you may have whatever you wish.”

Bond remained a step or two back, his body an exercise in tension, in anger. “Can Q even survive that much power in him?” he asked, in a voice that threated to be a growl, a rasp.

Not Q; he couldn’t lose Q like this.

“Svartalfheim.”

Loki laughed, and Bond knew the battle was lost; whatever that word meant, it held a sway that was literally visible in Thor and Loki alike. Thor needed Loki’s help – couldn’t do without it, in fact – and it was enough to keep Loki merrily controlling _everything_.

Bond moved.

All was still, as Loki found a blade against his throat. “Give me Q,” he told the god coldly.

Thor took a step, and the edge bit further. “I _am_ ‘Q’. This is his body,” Loki told him, shifting back to Q’s form again and proving the point, Bond’s grip tightening as he held onto his lover’s warmth, threatening Q’s life so easily, so simply. “You have no sense of what you are doing, Midgardian.”

“Where is Q’s mind?” Bond asked, suspending his own disbelief for a long moment, just so he could work out how to proceed: whether he believed this was possible or not, it was _happening_ , and he needed Q back.

The blade bit in closer. “ _Now_.”

Thor’s hands were up, non-confrontational. “James Bond. You are a good man, in Midgard. You care for the boy they call Q. You would not harm his physical form.”

“Q’s been hurt before,” Bond returned simply, and moved the blade to Q’s shoulder, the tip dancing on the edge of muscle. Non-lethal, but would hurt, truly hurt; Q’s eyes were wide and horrified and frightened. “He will forgive me, I know that.”

“ _James_.”

It was Q, Q’s voice, no impinging edge of Loki’s crispness or dancing lyricism, and Q’s eyes were a softer green and deeper somehow. “Q?”

“James, he can switch in and out, we both can – I’m trying, but threatening me with a bloody knife isn’t going to help. Loki is the only one who can get Thor to Svartalfheim, and he needs to save Jane – Bond, you have to let us both go. I’m so sorry.”

Bond looked at Thor for a moment, with a depth of concentration, of uncertainty. “We may find ways to heal this,” he told Bond softly. “For now, we need Loki. I cannot watch Jane die, James Bond. You understand that.”

The knife flew out Bond’s hand, quivering in the wall opposite; Bond whipped around to catch Loki, to find two of him. Q’s body, Loki’s body. “James, _James_ , I’m doing it. I’m doing this,” Q told him, Q’s voice, Q’s body. “Me, not him. I’m learning to…”

Loki’s form laughed outright, and there were four; two Qs, two Lokis. “Follow if you can,” he taunted outright, and doubled again, and again. “Your curious little Midgardian toy…”

Bond’s lips curled in a snarl. “He’s not a _toy_.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Loki responded, without a heartbeat of hesitation, and grinned in a way that could only be described as leonine. “He is speaking to me, to us, and the _question is_ , which creature will you return home with when this is done, when we are gone? Two bodies, beings, fostering our magic and sharing our consciousness; _he needs me_. I need him.”

The voices were the same, and different, and sodding _everywhere_.

“Loki, that is _enough_.”

Thor’s voice seemed to slice through the chaos, and there was utter quiet. “Let me save Jane, and we will discuss this further,” Thor told them levelly, the strength of one who would become king, eventually. “James Bond. You must remain here.”

Bond’s laugh was sharp and unkind. “I am not leaving any part of Q,” he stated frankly, and watched the hybrid of his lover with sharp distrust. “I’m coming with you.”

“You are human. This is world that…”

“I won’t fight, if you don’t want me,” Bond snapped, “but I will be there. If Loki abandons Q’s body, I could lose him, and I _will not_ let that happen.”

Q’s voice. “He won’t abandon my body. He needs me. Thor, beware of him – I can…”

The cut-off was abrupt, and unsurprising. “Shall we?” Loki purred in Q’s body, and smiled at Thor in a way that failed to be anything but unnerving.

-

Q was lost.

The memories were pressing inwards, and Q knew he needed help before Loki’s grief, his past, Q’s past, Q’s fears, became everything he was.

Loki borrowed him. Q was Odin.

Q was also Q again though, which was nice.

Q had _no idea_ what was happening any more. He was switching in and out of bodies with dizzying speed, in and out of worlds he didn’t know and didn’t understand, the link becoming more tenuous. It was growing past the stage of conscious ‘switching’; their minds continued to lace together, distributing thoughts and memories and ideas in a strange balance, an interwoven collection of fragments scattered across two bodies.

Jane Foster was saved. Q was not present for that. Loki was.

Loki died. Q died.

Half of themselves died. Q’s body. Loki’s mind.

Only not.

-

Thor believed his brother’s soul to be lost. Loki had been ostensibly in full possession of Q’s body when he died; the mind that died was Loki’s. Supposedly. Only, Q’s brain and Q’s life and Q’s body had been the actual thing to perish.

They had returned to Asgard, to find Q. Loki’s body was gone; it seemed Q had found himself ‘fixed’ within his shifted state, where he had last kept himself. Without Loki’s influence, Q’s ability to channel magic fully was tempered a little.

He was a little bit more adept at making himself transparent than before, which was weird but manageable.

Thor and Odin delivered him home. Q linked hands with Bond and held onto himself and tried to reach out to the further aspects of Yggdrasil, to retain everything he had learnt. He perused what remained of Loki, and developed, expanded, pursued knowledge to the furthest reaches a Midgardian had ever managed.

Just once in a while, his eyes turned bright emerald.

Just once in a while, Q remembered: his god could not die quite so easily. Loki would never be lost with quite such ease, such abruptness, such _carelessness_. Loki survived, and would perpetually do so.

Just once in a while, Q knew.

A Frost Giant sat on the throne of Asgard.

All was well.

**Author's Note:**

> Your thoughts, your words, are indescribably welcome.
> 
> For Lex, as always.


End file.
